The end of this chapter was romantic in a strange, twisted way. Just change some of the words, and keep that same desperate urgency, and you'll see what I mean. "Because I wanted to look at it." -- just imagine a scene with Boku looking at Morino's corpse... the intertwined reverence and disgust of Miguchi Nanami's discovery, multiplied by 1000, and with that unknown factor added to it. Because as of yet, we do not really know Boku, Morino, nor their relationship that well.

(And of course, all those hints Morino's mom kept dropping... It almost didn't seem like GOTH during those parts. Almost classic love-comedy type misunderstanding there. I'm looking forward to seeing how it develops; And how much of a misunderstanding it actually turns out to be in the end...)

That night, I called Morino's house. She had told it to me some time ago. She hadn't given it for any "Just in case you want to call my house" reason. The number for her house had unexpectedly come up in a rhyming game, in some crazy sentence she had blurted out. And so I had remembered that.

Just noticed something odd about this sentence. In my chinese RAW, it was something more along the lines of:

That night, I phoned Morino's house. She had given me her house number once, and the reason I still remembered it was not because I had anticipated some kind of emergency scenario, but rather because Morino had told me that her telephone number could be easily remembered via a series of mnemonics. That's how I managed to remember her phone number.

P/S: A mnemonic is a simple rhyme used to remember something, such as 'Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain' used to remember the colors of the Rainbow (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet - see the first letter f both sentences). (Alternatively, Michael Jackson Kissed His Butt In USA can be used to remember the colors of the rainbow in Malay - Merah, Jingga, Kuning, Hijau, Biru, Indigo, Ungu)

Morino's mother had no doubt that I was her daughter's boyfriend. She explained that her daughter didn't have any close friends, and she hadn't gotten a phone call from someone since elementary school.

This is another one which I think can be changed into something like:

Morino's mother insisted that I was her daughter's boyfriend. Her reasoning behind this was that her daughter didn't have any classmates/friends* close enough to be called 'friends', and ever since she had graduated from elementary school, she hadn't received a single phone call from one of her classmates.

*The word '友達' appears twice in this sentence, so if you want to stick as close as the original meaning, you would opt to replace the * in question with the word 'friends'. However, 'classmates' makes more sense in this sentence, since its common for most parents to assume all of their children's classmates as their 'friends'.

HolyCow:Yeah, that's a little embarrassing. I wasn't really sure about that sentence before, so I added a little "TODO" comment to look at it again. (By the way, if you don't do it already, you should view the wikitext source, because I occasionally sprinkle comments and clarifications or doubts I have; things that wouldn't fit into the sentence flow. Check my comments near the "Was she kidnapped by the criminal using brute force, I wonder?" sentence.)

Thanks for giving your own translation -- the big weakness I have in Japanese, is that once I have the meaning, I can (usually) easily break down a sentence structurally, but before that happens, I'm often prone to Necker Cube type illusions, like confusing active/passive/causative or mentally adding/subtracting a "koto" or "mono" -- so that helped my understanding a great deal.

That paragraph; me missing the part in red is what led to Morino only saying the crazy sentence, instead of talking about the FACT that it was a crazy sentence. (hangs head)

That night, I called Morino's house. She had told me her home phone number previously. I hadn't been told it in case I wanted to call her home. She had told me previously that her home phone number, unexpectedly, using wordplay, worked out to a crazy sentence. And so I had remembered that.

I really should have looked up "語呂合わせ - Wikipedia" before, but you know... hard work, etc. I'm surprised there even WAS an article on this.

語呂合わせ "goro-awase" literally means "joining word-sounds" ... basically games with words/numbers. For numbers in particular, you can make sentences, and usually the sentences are rude/shocking. Some examples they give are 427 = "死にな" = "shinina" = "shininasai" = "die (command)", and 37564 = "皆殺し" = "mina-goroshi" = "everyone killed; the murder of everyone"

So yeah, a mnemonic with a certain flavor to it... I can imagine Morino's goro-awase would be equally shocking.

(I don't know if this is really helpful to anyone, but perhaps if you're learning Japanese, or you're just curious how sentences get translated, and occasionally butchered.)

家に電話をするかもしれないI will call the house, I think --> I may/might call the house.家に電話をするかもしれないという理由でFor the reason that I may call the house.家に電話をするかもしれないという理由で番号を教わった。For the reason that I might call the house, the phone number was taught.家に電話をするかもしれないという理由で番号を教わったのではない。It is not the case that "For the reason that I might call the house, the phone number was taught."(de-translate-esed)I wasn't taught the number just in case I might call her house sometime.

女の家の番号Her home telephone number彼女の家の番号がたまたまごろ合わせでHer home telephone number, unexpectedly, through word-play --彼女の家の番号がたまたまごろ合わせで頭の狂った文章Her home telephone number, unexpectedly, through word-play, a crazy sentence彼女の家の番号がたまたまごろ合わせで頭の狂った文章になるHer home telephone number, unexpectedly, through word-play, becomes a crazy sentence彼女の家の番号がたまたまごろ合わせで頭の狂った文章になることthe fact that her home telephone number, unexpectedly, through word-play, becomes a crazy sentence彼女の家の番号がたまたまごろ合わせで頭の狂った文章になることを、以前、森野は話していた。Morino had mentioned before, the fact that her home telephone number, unexpectedly, through word-play, became a crazy sentence.

Also, the part about friends is "友達らしい友達" in my version, which works out literally to "friend-like friends" ... which in retrospect, is probably closer to "real friends" than "close friends" but I don't yet have the confidence to make judgments on something that subtle in Japanese. Any of the short ways of putting "friend" twice in the sentence "friend-like friends", "friendly friends", "friend-type friends", "FRIEND friends" all looked strange to me, so eventually I just decided to change the word, but (hopefully) keep the meaning. Your "friends close enough to be called friends" kind of phrase is probably the shortest way to fit that kind of doubling into English.

After a little research, "友達らしい友達" does NOT seem to be a commonly used phrase at all, there being a few much more popular alternatives. So it's a set phrase, but not a common one. In order to preserve the doubling (though the adjective->noun structure's going to have to be dropped) I'm thinking "friends who really were friends" right now.

娘には友達らしい友達がおらず、For her daughter, friend-like friends not being present, ...娘には友達らしい友達がおらず、家にだれかから電話がかかってきたのはFor her daughter, without friend-like friends, the house getting a telephone call from someone ...娘には友達らしい友達がおらず、家にだれかから電話がかかってきたのは小学生のとき以来であるFor her daughter, without friend-like friends, the house getting a telephone call from someone, that is since elementary school times. (this use of "since" is not directly translatable, I suspect, but I've done so anyway, for consistency. And yes, it's "since" as in "since X" = "from X to now", not "from" -- I haven't seen "以来" used in any other way... except in this sentence. I suspect that the direct meaning of "the doing of X is since Y" is "the doing of X is an event of the time period from Y to now" or "the doing of X is an event that is singular in the time period from Y to now" -- or "for her daughter, being without any friend-like friends, this is the first time the house has gotten a phone call since elementary school times.")娘には友達らしい友達がおらず、家にだれかから電話がかかってきたのは小学生のとき以来であることThe fact that, for her daughter, without friend-like friends, the house getting a telephone call from someone, is since elementary school times.娘には友達らしい友達がおらず、家にだれかから電話がかかってきたのは小学生のとき以来であることを説明した。She explained that, for her daughter, without friend-like friends, the house getting a telephone call from someone, is since elementary school times.(de-translate-esed)She explained that, for her daughter, without any friends who were truly friends, the house getting a telephone call from someone, was something that hadn't happened since elementary school times.

Okay, so there's a tour of my twisted path from Japanese to English. I won't make a habit of doing this... (Where have I heard that before... ?)

(One thing ... I'm not sure I will be able to forgive you for that Michael Jackson mnemonic. Hopefully I can forget it sometime soon. Stupid memorable mnemonics... Also, since I wrote way too much, and you probably have forgotten it by now: Could you check my comments near the "Was she kidnapped by the criminal using brute force, I wonder?" sentence? I'm not entirely certain about the sense in which that question was asked.)

I should make another update in under a week; definite this time. It'll probably be two updates to finish, if I can find a proper cliffhanger -- I couldn't find a good place to stop for ch3... so I didn't.

I did some edits on ch3 yesterday based on the discussions here; I just tried to fix the notebook tenses, but I'm not 100% sure, because some things seem quite strange in light of my current theory, which is:

Japanese present tense can also be used for future tense. Thus, when he uses present tense, it can be seen as "I plan to do this" ... and when he uses past, well, it's past, so it's "I actually did this" -- hopefully the final chapter will shed some light on this.

HolyCow:Thanks for the second opinion about the "brute force" thing. I think I might do some adjustments around that section later on. Looks like there wasn't any extra nuance behind that question at least.

Just a quick quote of that passage and surrounding text, just for reference.

the_naming_game wrote:Japanese present tense can also be used for future tense. Thus, when he uses present tense, it can be seen as "I plan to do this" ... and when he uses past, well, it's past, so it's "I actually did this" -- hopefully the final chapter will shed some light on this.

So if my parents asked if I "am doing" my homework, I could reply that I "will do it" and they'll think I'm studying?

For maximum Morino-moe effect, try glancing through the manga after reading the story; there are details in one that aren't in the other, so I wouldn't recommend reading both in parallel, or reading the manga at all. Just go to pages 72 and 90 upon the first appearance of Morino in this chapter. I'm starting to think it might be a good idea after all, to take out certain panels and have them as illustrations.

My thoughts on ch4.

Spoiler! :

Yes, it's the final chapter. The ending seemed abrupt to me. At least the novel continues...

It all happened pretty fast; the lack of violence was disturbing. Morino tied up on the floor, a must-see in the manga. The way Boku figured it all out seemed rather tenuous. It gave me Sherlock Holmes flashbacks how everything suddenly fell into place at the end.

I was surprised that Morino hadn't been able to figure out the true identity of the shop owner. And of course, Boku didn't tell her. In the manga he only takes one knife; in the novel, he takes the entire knife set. Countless other differences of course. The manga does take lines from the novel verbatim. To be expected.

In the end, it was over too soon, and I'm left wanting more. Good thing there is more!

Dan:Think of it like someone speaking bad English:

"I go now!" and "I go soon!" -- still understandable as present and future, but "I went soon!" can't be interpreted as future tense.

Well, languages all have bugs, but if a language has been around long enough, most of the annoying bugs have workarounds. I'm guessing that if you were Japanese, and you said simply "Benkyou shimasu!" ("I study!"... though "I am studying" is "benkyou shhitteimasu"; I think just "Benkyou shimasu!" is more "here I go, I'm studying!") to your parents, the assumption is that it's present tense. I think I might have shot my previous tense theory out of the water...

But anyway, I believe to show future clearly, usually you rely on context, or else you have to say "ashhita wa benkyou shimasu!" ("I study tomorrow!")(doubled hh is to get around the word filter)

Take all that with a grain of salt, seriously. The subtleties of this stuff still escape me.